Buses line up on Strawberry Hill Ave. to pick up students after school at Norwalk High School on Thursday February 2, 2017 in Norwalk Conn

Buses line up on Strawberry Hill Ave. to pick up students after school at Norwalk High School on Thursday February 2, 2017 in Norwalk Conn

Photo: Alex Von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media

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Buses line up on Strawberry Hill Ave. to pick up students after school at Norwalk High School on Thursday February 2, 2017 in Norwalk Conn

Buses line up on Strawberry Hill Ave. to pick up students after school at Norwalk High School on Thursday February 2, 2017 in Norwalk Conn

Photo: Alex Von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media

Image 3 of 5

Buses line up on Strawberry Hill Ave. to pick up students after school at Norwalk High School on Thursday February 2, 2017 in Norwalk Conn

Buses line up on Strawberry Hill Ave. to pick up students after school at Norwalk High School on Thursday February 2, 2017 in Norwalk Conn

Photo: Alex Von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media

Image 4 of 5

Buses line up on Strawberry Hill Ave. to pick up students after school at Norwalk High School on Thursday February 2, 2017 in Norwalk Conn

Buses line up on Strawberry Hill Ave. to pick up students after school at Norwalk High School on Thursday February 2, 2017 in Norwalk Conn

Photo: Alex Von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media

Image 5 of 5

Norwalk schools spend more than most to transport students

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NORWALK — Neighborhood children and the school district that educates them would share in the benefits of shorter commutes and lower transportation costs if the district moves forward with plans to build a new school in South Norwalk.

District officials say Norwalk Public Schools spends far more on busing its kids to and from school than most of the state’s public school systems. The district expends $7.6 million annually to transport students on 53 large buses and 15 small buses, Brenda Wilcox Williams, a spokeswoman for the school district, said.

A $5.2 million portion goes toward the regular daily transportation of roughly 8,046 of the district’s total students. Another $2.4 million covers the out-of-district transportation of special education students.

“... Many more students would be within walking distance of a high quality school,” Williams said of the prospect of a new South Norwalk school. “Reduced busing is first and foremost a benefit to students and families, but it would also help to manage transportation costs in the future.”

The high costs for transportation could come from an unusually high number of students bused.

The percentage of children bused in public school systems nationally has been declining steadily since the mid-1980s, when slightly more than 60 percent of children were bused, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Comparatively, 71 percent of students in Norwalk are bused — some for as long as an hour — to and from school each day.

And as the school district’s enrollment continues to increase — an opposite trend from most of the state — the number of students bused will increase, and therefore costs will increase as well.

But school officials have been working on a plan for more than a year to address the district’s swelling enrollment through the construction of a new school and the expansion and renovation of several others.

The five-year $245.5 School Facilities Master Plan, which the board approved last month, includes the construction of a new school building at the former Nathaniel Ely School campus and the renovation of the current Columbus Magnet School building at 46 Concord St.

District administrators shifted their sights to South Norwalk for a new school because it’s the only remaining part of town currently without a neighborhood school — and, district officials said, is where most of growth in enrollment is centered, primarily driven by high birth rates.

An estimated 1,375 pre-K through eighth-grade students live in the South Norwalk area that is currently unassigned. Those students are currently bused to eight different schools across the city.

Though the plans have evolved from the creation of a strictly neighborhood school to the creation of a new school building to house Columbus Magnet School and renovate that school’s current building to house an International Baccalaureate Magnet School program, school officials say neighborhood preference would be given to those schools in a lottery.

A side effect of their plan to meet growing enrollment, therefore, would be less students bused and the spending on transportation reduced.

“While enrollment concerns are what generated the need for the School Facilities Master Plan, the plan does have transportation benefits,” Williams said.

A neighborhood school for students means less busing, as some students who were previously bused across the city would be able to walk to school or, at the least, take a shorter bus ride.

However, while the plans are still in the process of making it through City Hall, they would be dramatically pared down if the decision rested solely on Norwalk Director of Finance Robert Barron.

In his capital budget recommendation for the next five years released late Wednesday, Barron included funding to cover only 41.69 percent of the Board of Education’s total $245.5 million plans.

Under Barron’s recommendation, the construction of a new K-8 building for Columbus Magnet School on the Nathaniel Ely School campus would be fully funded, while the plans to renovate Columbus Magnet School’s current building would go completely unfunded.

That leaves the future of the proposed South Norwalk magnet school at 46 Concord St. up in the air, along with the district’s hopes of less busing and the consequential savings in its reportedly high transportation budget.

The city’s Planning Commission will make its recommendations on the school district’s Capital Budget on Feb. 23. That will be passed on to the mayor by March 5, per city charter. The mayor will then make his recommendation to the Board of Estimate and Taxation by March 15. Finally, that board will pass its recommendation to the Common Council by April 1, which must approve a final capital budget by April 15.